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Small Bay Area Coffee Roasters Spread Out

Coffee has been part of Bay Area culture from the start. Folgers and Hills Brothers started by providing java (a term coined on San Francisco’s piers) to thirsty 49ers. And there have long been boutique roasters like Caffe Trieste in North Beach, which has made Italian-style espresso since 1956, and Peet’s, which introduced its characteristic dark roasts in Berkeley in 1966 and led, through its descendant Starbucks, to a wholesale revision in the way America drinks coffee.

Today the pattern is repeating itself as small local roasters are expanding to make their marks in distant cities.

Ritual Coffee Roasters has moved its roaster to a bigger site on Howard Street in SOMA, in part to serve wholesale accounts as far away as New York and Boston.

“This is a coffee playground,” said Eileen Hassi, Ritual’s owner, as she stood on the catwalk above her roaster, looking over heavy sacks of green coffee beans and clusters of coffeemaking equipment in the bright, open space. Ms. Hassi plans to open a small cafe there as well, bringing the total of Ritual outlets to four.

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At Ritual Coffee in San Francisco, Ben Kaminsky, left, Joel Edwards, center, and Steve Ford test the coffee.Credit
Craig Lee for The New York Times

Blue Bottle, which roasts in Oakland, went a step further by opening a roaster and cafe in Brooklyn last month. These moves are part of a national expansion of small, obsessive roasters from the West Coast entering what was, until recently, a coffee desert in New York City. The Bay Area’s role in this growth represents the maturation of a scene that once lagged behind Seattle and Portland, Ore.

“San Francisco has attracted coffee professionals from all over the country,” Ms. Hassi said. Her company is part of the reason: in 2005 “third wave” coffeemaking — intensely concerned with quality and technique — arrived in the Bay Area with the opening of Blue Bottle’s Hayes Valley kiosk at 315 Linden Street and of Ritual, at 1026 Valencia Street. (In the South Bay, Barefoot Coffee Roasters started the next year.)

Ritual, which has 40 employees, and Blue Bottle, with 90, make up a Bay Area coffee brain trust. Roasters and baristas who learned their craft with these two have gone on to take third-wave DNA to other cafes or to open their own roasters. Jeremy Tooker, the founder of Four Barrel at 375 Valencia Street, who also plans to open a new roaster by the end of this year, started Ritual with Ms. Hassi. The Morrison brothers, Jerad and Justin, who are building out Sight Glass, a roaster and cafe at 270 Seventh Street in SOMA, worked for Four Barrel and Blue Bottle.

The companies turn out espresso so consistently stellar that preparation is no longer the point of distinction it once was. “The issues and problems of espresso coffee have been solved,” said James Freeman, Blue Bottle’s founder. Instead, blends have moved to the fore.

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Four Barrel roaster and coffee bar in San Francisco.Credit
Craig Lee for The New York Times

“Our whole espresso program is based on seasonality,” Ms. Hassi said. Ritual’s Evil Twin blend contains two different Brazilian coffees. Mr. Tooker at Four Barrel blends six to eight coffees into his espresso, aiming for a clean, consistently sweet shot. “We want some spice and stone fruit qualities,” he said, “and a good hoppy bite.” Blue Bottle uses different espresso blends at each of its six outlets, and all three roasters also offer single-origin shots.

Creative energy has shifted to drip coffee. In 2008, Clover, whose single-cup brewing machine had become the darling of third wavers, was bought by Starbucks and the devices were no longer available to anyone else. The result has been a period of intense experimentation with French press pots, Chemex drip systems, Bonmac porcelain cones, and the current ne plus ultra, the V60 glass cone from the Japanese company Hario.

Mr. Freeman is particularly fond of his Japanese Bonmac siphon bar. He built the Mint Plaza Blue Bottle at 66 Mint Street to house the elegant and mysterious contraption properly. “It’s a setting for my desires,” he said of the airy, subtly severe space, “what I wish for in a cafe.” The coffee the siphon produces — particularly if you choose a dry-processed bean like Bali Kintamani from Indonesia ($6 or $12) — is clean, smooth and warming, with a long, flavorful finish.

The marketplace is rewarding the effort. Mr. Tooker said Four Barrel, which has been open a year and a half, is wildly profitable: he estimated the cafe’s retail side generates revenues of $100,000 a month, with 45 percent of that profit. This kind of revenue opens other possibilities. By sending its buyer to farms from Colombia to Ethiopia, rare for a company its size, Ritual ensures a supply of unusual beans.

And just in time: Intelligentsia, which started in Chicago, one of the highest profile of the lot, has roasters and cafes in Chicago and Los Angeles. Last year, it bought Ecco Caffe in Santa Rosa and this summer plans a cafe and roaster under Ecco’s name in Potrero Hill. The workers, of course, learned their trade at Ritual.

A version of this article appears in print on April 9, 2010, on page A17B of the New York edition with the headline: Small Bay Area Coffee Roasters Spread Out. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe